Rob Bricken

I don't watch Extreme Home Makeover, because I cry really, really easily and I never have enough tissues to handle the end when a family in need gets a house they deserve. But it's a shame I missed this past Sunday's episode, because apparently the Star Wars-loving cosplayers of the Central Texas 501st Legion, also known as Vader's Fist, stopped by to help a female firefighter whose Star Wars-loving family had ironically lost their home in a wildfire.

"I just saw the opening two minutes and they had Darth Vader and his Storm Troopers helping build a new house!" one Star Wars fanboy complained to me. "This is disgusting and it's exactly what people were afraid of with Disney buying Star Wars. They are ruining the franchise by using it for trivial bullshit. Please write about this. It's outrageous and it's totally wrong."

Here is the news: NIKKI FINKE KNOWS THE WORST STAR WARS FAN IN THE ENTIRE WORLD. Maybe the worst person in the world; certainly he/she's in the running. Honestly, I refuse to believe this person actually exists. In all my days as a professional nerd, I can't even imagine the most hardcore of Star Wars fans getting upset — or really, being anything other than happy or proud — that a cosplayer helped cheer up a family of Star Wars fans on a TV show.

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The incivility — hell, the actual evil necessary to mentally put the Star Wars franchise ahead of the basic welfare of other human beings seems astonishingly impossible. Not just in the sense that only a psychopath would think a fan helping people somehow denigrates the Star Wars franchise - but because the Star Wars franchise has denigrated itself so far past an Extreme Home Makeover tie-in that it probably doesn't even crack the top 100.

Has this person never gone to a Star Wars weekend and seen professional actors paid to dress like Darth Vader and dance to MC Hammer? Do they not realize this has been happening for years, well before Disney bought Lucasfilm? Have they never seen the inexplicably abhorrent Star Wars Holiday Special, that Lucas himself approved? Did they see that VW commercial with the little kid dressed as Darth Vader? Have they not seen the actual, licensed Star Wars fishing rod? DID THEY NOT SEE JAR JAR? DO THEY REALLY THINK AN ACT OF TELEVISION CHARITY IS SOMEHOW ACTUALLY WORSE THAN SEEING JAR JAR STEP IN ONE OF THE ACTUAL GODDAMNED STAR WARS MOVIES?!

Look. I cannot truly imagine this person is real. I have to think that Finke asked someone, possibly at gun point, to give her some terrible quote in order to make up a story about Star Wars fans being upset Disney bought the franchise, because must of us are actually pretty pleased. But if this person is real, congratufuckinglations, sir or madam, because you are the the most terrible goddamned nerd in the entire world. And congratulations to Nikki Finke for managing to get his/her quote for her article.